Provided herein are systems and methods related to obesity treatment and weight loss by a gastric restriction device, and that is implemented at least in part by transabdominal access to the gastric environment. The gastric restriction device corresponds to a size-varying gastric balloon that can be inflated to a deployed volume that occupies a significant fraction of the stomach volume and that is reliably anchored so as to prevent unwanted balloon migration.
In recent years obesity and related disorders, such as diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, have increased substantially. When compliance with diet, exercise and behavioral therapy fail to achieve weight loss, pharmacotherapy may be instituted. However, pharmacotherapy has had only modest success and may be discontinued if a patient experiences unpleasant side-effects. Long term safety of pharmaceutical use for treatment of obesity is uncertain, and patients generally regain lost weight when the therapy is discontinued. A variety of surgical treatments have recently become available for obesity, but typically as a last resort. Those surgical treatments have the advantage of more rapid initial weight loss and remission of diabetes mellitus than other non-invasive therapies. However, surgery is expensive, subject to risks of morbidity and mortality, and its efficacy may be reduced by patient noncompliance with post-surgical dietary restrictions. If patients fail to limit food intake, their bodies may undergo compensatory anatomical changes that partially overcome the effects of surgery. The most invasive surgical procedures tend to achieve the greatest long term percent change in weight, but also tend to be the most costly, require longer periods of recuperation and careful long term management of nutrients to avoid malnutrition.
Although there have been various attempts to treat obesity by minimally invasive procedures, those attempts still suffer from significant disadvantages including one or more of being relatively complex, difficult to modify or remove, result in permanent anatomical changes, or undergo efficacy degradation with time. The systems and related methods provided herein address these limitations in that the gastric-occupying devices are robust and long-lasting, while being easily inserted, positioned, manipulated and removed from a patient using a minimally invasive procedure.